Two mother-of-pearl shards saved from a Jewish owned factory and given to a survivor 50 years later

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Two mother-of-pearl shards presented to Rose Galek Brunswic in 1987 by the son of a former employee in her father's factory in Sochocin, Poland. Marceli Kochanowski's mother had saved the shards, raw material for the buttons which she had helped make in Moshe Galek's factory before the war. See 1989.204.1 for finished buttons. In November 1940, a year after the German occupation of Poland in September 1939, Raszka (Rose), her parents Moshe and Fela, and her younger sisters Deana and Sala were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In April 1943, Raszka’s parents were shot as she watched and her sisters were deported to a concentration camp and presumed killed. Raszka escaped and went into hiding. A resistance member, Jan Majewski, helped her obtain false papers as a Polish Catholic, Maria Kowalczyk. In June, she was sent as a forced laborer to a farm in Krummhardt, Germany, owned by an SS member. Raszka was liberated by US forces in April 1945. She moved to Stuttgart displaced persons camp and emigrated to the United States in 1947.

Show lessRead more

Details

Title: Two mother-of-pearl shards saved from a Jewish owned factory and given to a survivor 50 years later

Location: Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945 .

Provenance: The mother-of-pearl shards were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1989 by Rose Brunswic, the daughter of Moshe Galek.

Medium: The a and b designations have been added for cataloging purposes.
a. Iridescent, v-shaped whitish mother-of-pearl shell fragment with smooth, narrow sides and fragmented, layered edges. There are 3 semi-circular cuts on one side where it was cut to create buttons.
b. Iridescent, v-shaped whitish mother-of-pearl shell fragment with smooth, wide sides and fragmented, angled, layered edges. One side has a large semi-circular cut and smaller cuts where it was cut to create buttons,